by H C Turk
“Being a common witch,” I confronted her, “I demand that you allow me to remain clothed in a simple manner as is proper for my natural state.”
“Aye, but I can’t be taking orders from you, lass. ’Tis Mistress Amanda for which I work, and she and me both have seen more difficult children than you are imagining. So you’ll be doing now what the mistress tells you as I convey it.”
But I would not. Though I made no aggressive move as the servant stepped near, I reached her first, taking the woman’s wrist with no exceptional pressure, though I was discomforted by the contact.
Never before had I touched a sinner. But from the grip of sinners to steal me, kill me, I knew their flesh to be warm, and felt this heat upon grasping Elsie. Was not this inner heat the aspect of their nature to make them so active, the cause for their inventing new varieties of flame? Elsie’s response was thus predictable. Unkindly, I intended to disturb her. Herein I succeeded, for with my firm touch, the servant looked down to my hand, thereafter pulling her entire body away.
Sarah Meacham had poked my hair and fabric. Elsie received all skin, cold skin.
I felt nothing of the Bishop.
“Blessed Jesus, lass,” she hissed while looking toward me with a distraught visage, “you would have to be dead to feel so cold.” And she continued to step away, backwards, quitting the room as though she had been asked to tend the dead. So absolute was her move that I assumed she also quit the Rathel lady’s household, as though such employ were abundant.
It is not. Rare is the witch with a servant. I retained mine, however. Though I desired only to have this sinner avoid me, I was surprised to find her soon returned. Elsie had donned gloves, the type worn to protect sinners from winter. These would protect Elsie from a witch’s coldness. Standing again with her arms comfortably straight at her sides, Miss Elsie stated her position.
“You and I, lass, shall become familiar.”
Though making no move toward me, the servant controlled my dressing, pointing with her gloves, which would surely insulate her from my cool demeanor. Firmly, literally, she pointed out how and where to apply each article of clothing.
I smelled her fear, but also her determination. And I complied, the witch not pleased but nearly amused with this stern servant. Because I was a witch, I felt shame for cooperating, but loneliness precluded my receiving torment from understanding that the next person to share with me familiarity would be a sinner.
• • •
A seamstress was hired to construct apparel in accord with my specific shape. Standing in thin undergarments as a humming woman hovered around me was less distressful than many previous manipulations of the sinners, sinning men. In fact, Elsie’s observing every move of the seamstress was somehow supportive. Perhaps she had mentioned cold skin to this woman. Perhaps not. Days later, a raft of garments began entering my chamber and my personal furniture for housing them. Elsie was wonderfully pleased at the finery, but I lacked appreciation. Rathel was nearer in response to her servant than her protégé.
“I am so pleased that your attire is now excellent. Despite your disregard for satisfying me, I would thank you for pleasing Miss Elsie. Eventually you will find her a mild and friendly person, though not one of your kind. As a type of reward, I would like to show you a part of London that might refresh you in its wildness. Perhaps on our journey you might find a way of escaping the city. Perhaps not.”
Perhaps I would agree to see Rathel’s wild site with the briefest reply and no mention of escaping, a possibility I had not rejected, though flight is no topic to be discussed with one’s captor.
Since the overall ambience of the city was oppressive, I continued to have difficulty in sensing London as I would a new forest, whose parts would be comprehensible from familiarity with the genre. Being dragged along by captured horses was no aid. Along the street we clattered only moments before reaching our destination—but we did not stop. Through the window, I saw a green area of trees and grass, and though flanked by streets and containing a few walking sinners, nevertheless, this was wilderness compared to the brief frontage of Rathel’s townhouse. “This is not our goal?” I asked the sinning lady. “This is but a park,” she replied. “Our goal is grand.”
We continued. During this journey, I noticed at the end of several streets smaller versions of that park, areas of natural land—with elms and brush and grass—appropriately termed “greens.” But since none were grand, none were visited by the heinous lady and her slave. We did not stop until after my first major horror in London.
Despite these comforting green bits, London was yet a universe of ungodly products. But the first experience to strike me with fear acute enough to be physical was another variety of sinning transportation. This was no coach nor carriage, however, but a bridge, in some conceptual manner the same as a boat in that both allow passage over water. But boats are sensible in floating like a log or animal, whereas this bridge seemed a road foolishly made to float in the air. Bridges I had seen before on Man’s Isle, but they were low and short and encountered prior to a family member’s drowning. Those of Man’s Isle were sheds; the one we approached was akin to St. Nicholas Cathedral: so bombastic as to be of another species, like sinners and witches. Hershford Bridge was high to allow the passage of large boats below, and constructed not like a timber bridge of Man’s Isle nor the lesser bridges of London. The latter had thick walls with cave-like passages for boats, but Hershford Bridge had been set upon pilasters too thin to support its own mass. Perverse these sinners were to make lesser bridges more substantial than their greatest. Lower bridges depended upon accumulated stone for support, whereas Hershford relied on the desperate wishes of deluded sinners to remain upright.
I was astonished to look from the coach to see myself above a broad river. Boats floated safely below, but I was suspended by poor idea, for roadways cannot float. They are heavy and must sink, sink to the bottom of this river and take the witch along, the witch utterly fearful of any water since Marybelle’s being weighted and thrown into the sea. Marybelle’s falling, falling through water convinced me that I could drown. What a frightening affront to common sense was Hershford Bridge. To stretch thin wood and brittle metal over water seemed as sensible as attempting to support its traffic with clothing: even the grandest gown of silk and silver buttons would be ripped with the first application of weight. Looking out from the coach, I lost my breath, lost my ability to think; for I was held by the devil and about to be dropped, about to sink and drown and thereby manifest with my own death those nightmares I had been suffering of Marybelle’s demise. I knew not what had occurred to her beneath the Irish Sea, only knew that the ocean had killed my sister as the Thames would soon murder me.
My final fear was the smell of death, Marybelle gone without an odor, but I would smell my own body rotting on the bottom, the stench exactly as permanent as Mother’s acrid deposit in my personal air. My upcoming death seemed punishment from Satan for my foolish inference that because I had never smelled Marybelle’s dying, perhaps great God had again overcome the devil and allowed a witch to live. This imbecilic notion vanished as my dread peaked, the certainty that Hershford would hurl me into the water where I would smother with a death as sure as burning. But my terror extended as though a bridge itself, extended for an endless spell without my breathing as the coach passed over the solid bridge no less supportive than the following roadway.
This passage invoked such danger that I have yet to forget, have yet to stop fearing. How could I forget an experience never to end? As we gained the bank and I frantically made to escape, Lady Amanda grasped me, insisting that I calm and explain myself. I then thought of her stepping upon me as I lay on the ocean floor, thought of her ruining my pride by ruining my proof, but what was the equivalence? My only reply was to reach for the door, but I could not decode the mechanism, fumbling at the metal latch as Rathel restrained me. Finally, I spoke the single word, “bridge.” Then the sinner understood, providing me with a comparison; for Rath
el ruined me again by explaining that to return we would necessarily cross that bridge again. And though she insisted that our next passage would be as safe as the first, I could not heed her truth, defeated again by the sinners’ heinous vision of the world wherein fear was not an evil to be avoided, but a byproduct of city living, like fumes from cooking and the effects of plague.
I was taken to a place of geometry: the trees and hedges of Pangham Gardens were cut into false shapes, cubes and spheres. Pangham’s large pools held floating buckets of flowers, and metal fishes swam below. Yes, the fishes in these stone ponds were of the brightest gold—the astounding sinners had managed to coat God’s creatures with their most evil material. And the fishes were real, for they set up a smell no sinner could replicate. Forever I would walk on the colored gravel of Pangham Gardens, where no carriage was allowed and stare at the fishes rather than cross that bridge again, stare at the fishes without wondering further of their organic gold, stare at the fishes until the sinning lady told me they were rare in England but grew wild in the Orient. Stare at the fishes and walk forever until Rathel understood that my prime sight was a bridge in my future, the one to haunt me in the present.
“We return with no delay,” she said, “so your fear will be alleviated. Within the coach, I shall close the curtains so that nothing frightening can be seen. Understand your safety in advance, Alba, for I am with you and have no desire to die.”
Her tactic was successful until halfway across when I ripped the opaque curtain aside to see, for I could smell the water and sense the height and needed to see the bridge collapsing so that I might react. So that I might grasp the air or watch myself fall and sink and drown. But Rathel was correct, for eventually we crossed in safety, the only damage to my memory, and not to be repaired.
Chapter 5
In The Wilds Again
Wise was Lady Amanda not to recommend further ventures into London. Within her house and my chamber I remained, having no intents of escape since I knew that crossing a bridge would be required for my exiting London. After Hershford Bridge, I was entrapped not by the city, but by my fears, a rather insubstantial prison for so physical a witch.
After enjoying lengthy relief from surviving the Thames, I accepted an unusual feeling of security. Though trapped in a city of sinners, I would not be found the witch unless revealed by Rathel, and she desired me for herself. No other dangers threatened me as long as I remained away from the Thames. And though this disposition continued into evening, not until the day’s social end came a change not to my thinking but my life.
Donning that light gown for sleeping as per Elsie’s education, I waited for a servant to enter my chamber and kill the hated candle, to reduce the evil oil lamp never known in my mother’s home. Sinners are so wicked that to illuminate themselves after God ends His true light of day they burn little parts of their households. The smells were unlike cooking animals, unlike any odors known to me, but they stank. Worse was the heat: not the quantity, but the immediacy. I could not bear to approach the candle and blow it out or use the snuffer, and the oil lamp was worse in being surrounded by hot glass. No sleeping would I have with those fire sources staring at me, prepared to attack, the witch so aware of her surrounds that now she could suffer from them.
Elsie’s entrance was virtually joyous, for she was pleased to comply with my congenial request to quench the flames, though she wondered why the tasks were not within my capacity. This acceptable experience with Elsie recalled her assertion of familiarity to come. As I lay with improved feelings, I thanked Lord God that this bed had no major portion made of metal, not the posts nor canopy, only some fasteners ensconced in the joints they secured. But there my praying ended, and my misery began.
I felt so secure that I remembered my past. At once I was overwhelmed by my mother’s death, this truth so terrific that despite my rejecting the memory, it always returned. With all of my energy, I struggled not to consider Mother, her sight, her smell, her self, not to consider her companionship and love, all gone, completely gone. This anguish peaked with impossibility, for she could not be gone, could not be absent from every part of the forest, could not be separate from me, lost forever. But she was gone, was dead, was in this impossible state, and would never return, gone with no fault of her own. But I felt no blame for myself, only sorrow, utter sorrow, a tormented state to negate the relief in survival I had found that day. Nothing remained but her death, nothing but a void in my heart where my love for Mother resided. Then came pain, physical pain in my head and stomach and rigid lungs, a pain to weaken me so much that I could not think, only feel, feel the loss that was my mother, feel an agony that no person—witch or sinner—could be evil enough to deserve, mine nonetheless, my torment forever.
This suffering was the core of my beginning life in London, the awareness of Mother’s death followed by bodily pain, then exhaustion, a wearied heart and damaged thinking. Elsie’s kindness that evening perhaps influenced me toward considering Mother’s greatest love, and that was her daughter. I understood that Mother would have me survive and love her forever without torment. In my weakness, however, I could only consider my mother’s demise.
I thought of the sinners who killed her: the alderman and bishop, the ostensible Lady Rathel, the one to have stolen me—or was it merely borrowing? Had not this woman attempted to spare Mother? This contention of hers was reasonable in that Mother’s continued existence would have been beneficial to me, and I was the witch Rathel desired, her purpose to have me kill for her and thereby achieve some vengeance. Now Rathel had provided me with a safe chamber to encourage my cooperation, encourage further murder, but that act was of the future—that act was unbelievable. My current situation was more important: my new home and world and my need to survive therein. Then came recollection of grand St. Nicholas Cathedral, of heinous Hershford Bridge. Thereupon, I was struck not with memories nor details of these experiences, but their power, the inordinate energy they claimed within my existence. As though a chamber pot filled to the brim with urine, that excess energy spilled and slopped upon me, and it stank. My reaction was to demand that I survive the power and potential of my life in London. I determined to understand my current place and live as best as possible with Mother in my memory and God in my heart. I would begin with my chamber, my bed, but not that day, for I was exhausted from emoting. I slept, no dreaming, pleased the entire night to have no further heat within my personal quarters, no fire within my heart.
• • •
Elsie found me beneath my bed. What a fine place for hiding, the space below tight around me, the remaining world separated from the concealed witch. The liquid applied to the wooden floor was a partially natural material, for I recognized the scent of pine sap and walnut oil; but something had been heated here, the resin cooked to change it to a sinners’ creation. I would make the product less noticeable by rubbing against the wooden surface as I crawled into this adequate hole, crawling out only when Elsie came with the broom to poke at me and complain.
“Aye, and you’re trying me again, lass,” she moaned as though damaged, “trying me by clambering on the floor in your lovely nightclothes. So you’re coming out, now, to be dressing proper for the waking hours as I’ve taught you. Then you’re hieing yourself for a meal, child, else I’m leaving your lamp burn the entire night, along with extra candles.”
Fair enough, and out I moved from beneath my bed, determining to be witch enough to have gratitude for this woman’s kindly aid of the previous night. But not enough gratitude could I find to violate my stomach with the congealed animal grease considered food in this obscene universe. Instead of eating, I applied myself toward London.
Not all of the apparel Elsie provided could I connect alone. Included in my wardrobe were diabolical corsets and gowns whose laces and straps could not be secured by the wearer. How could even sinners be so foolish as to design apparel the wearer could not don unaided, and worse, not remove alone? What if a lady caught fire and had to
divest at once lest she burn dead? What if a lady fell from a bridge into a river and had to unburden herself of a mass of fabric so sodden it prevented her climbing up the bank toward air?
Having sufficient familiarity with my bed and that satisfying space below, I continued with the remainder of my chamber, achieving a strange pride with that idea of possession: my chamber. The pride I received came from a sense of shelter and security. The accompanying strangeness, however, was a taint of guilt from my taking any comfort from the sinners, strangeness being appropriate since my mentor’s prime interest was death.
The ceiling of my chamber was flat but bordered with cornices as though a moderate, less colorful version of St. Nicholas’s entry with one more spider. Patterned carpet on the floor, patterned paper on two walls, oiled wood on those remaining. The bed I knew, but how remarkably large it seemed, and extravagant with its layers of sheets and quilts, not unlike the clothing I was to wear, not unlike that bed in which I slept my last day on Man’s Isle. And here was a blessed lack of concise recollection, for it seems I had become so ill as to vomit upon that clean surface. Of my current bed, I imagined the deeper contents: some type of softest straw or similar material stuffed into a precise, rectangular form called a mattress. But, no, that was imagination. The true substance had not been washed enough for its odor to be hidden. From the first, I had found comfort in my bed and pillows due to their natural odor, but now I knew it dead. The smell was of feathers and down, materials not to be removed from living fowl. Then I wondered of the hairbrush provided me, wondered whether a pig’s bristles could be removed from the animal while alive, and if so, would the plucking not be torture? Refraining from vomiting upon my new bed despite the good cause of my fowl awareness, I prayed that God might forgive the sinners for their inequities if only He could end them as well, praying also in apology for my failing to recognize the dead smell earlier, finding selfish comfort instead.